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Faculty alumni, Dr. Becker, developed a technology that replaces human service representatives with virtual AI-based agents. Last month his company, voca.ai, established in 2017 with his partners, was sold to the American Snap, owner of SnapChat, for $70M.
Photo: Guy Dvir

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Last month, Michal Danino learned that she was accepted into Intel’s 2021 scholarship program for promoting excellence and diversity in engineering and science. “The scholarship aims to diversify the world of technology and take a part in social change since diversity in technology leads to a better outcome and technological revolutions,” says Danino. “The scholarship was awarded to 25 excelling engineering, computer science, chemistry and physics bachelor and master students who took part in community or volunteer work, promoting diverse communities.” Danino’s eligibility is a result of her high GPA, long years of community service – including MADA, working with special needs children, and encouraging and supporting religious girls who want to join the military – and her research of Alzheimer’s disease.

Knot theory is a mathematical field that greatly affected physics, and vice versa, and was discovered to have a great impact on numerous, versatile avenues in science. In laymen’s terms, knots theory describes what happens when we take a string and begin tangling it with itself. The resulting knot has invariant features that do not change even when shifted, rotated, stretched, or squeezed. Major discontinuous changes such as cutting the string or passing it through itself are required in order to destroy these characteristics. That is why these knots, and particularly their braid representation, are relatively stable and resistant to error, so they present an innovative method of information processing, especially in the quantum world. Collaborative research between Eli Cohen of the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan, Prof. Avishy Carmi of Ben Gurion University, and several researchers from the University of Ottawa, headed by Prof. Ebrahim Karimi, demonstrated for the first time framed knots using an optical setup, which was first applied for purposes of secure communications. An article on the research and its outcomes was recently published in Nature Communications.

Prof. Alex Fish talks about the 700 Club, the Faculty’s excellence program, and stresses that this is not another program; it’s an actual club.

A study inspired by Dr. Eli Cohen’s theory explores transitions between strong and weak measurements of trapped ions. Covered by Nature Physics, the study is yet another step on the path to realizing and improving quantum computers

Dr. Shir Hochold-Lieber develops a biochip for diagnosing, sensing, and treating the human microbiome. Her work awarded her a postdoctoral scholarship by the Israel Academy of Science.

Like many things in nature, humans also have a natural tendency to synchronize. But what happens when something prevents us from doing just that? Dr. Moti Fridman and doctoral student Shir Shahal researched musical synchronization at the university’s nanotechnology museum project and came back with surprising conclusions on the dynamics of human networks.

The SPRING consortium, powered by the EU’s Horizon2020 program, is developing a socially pertinent robot. Prof. Sharon Gannot, head of one of the project’s research teams, explains how to give robots human listening capabilities.

After years of research, RAAAM is launching the smallest memory-on-chip demonstrated in CMOS tech. CEO Dr. Robert Giterman, Faculty graduate, explains why it is going to conquer the memory-on-chip market.

Eran Barnoy won an Excellence Award in a short lecture competition at the Israel Society for Medical and Biological Engineering this March. He was also awarded a prize in the Nano Art competition of the Bar Ilan Academy of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials Conference. In addition, he received a scholarship in the field of applied engineering sciences from the Ministry of Science.

This year, Michal Marcus, a doctoral student in Professor Orit Shefi's laboratory in the Faculty of Engineering, was awarded the academic-business sector scholarship for the Advancement of Women in Science from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space. The scholarship was awarded for her research on magnetic control of cellular and drug delivery for local treatment. The research was conducted with the support of Given Imaging, a company that develops technological methods for non-invasive visual examinations of the digestive system.

The technology developed by Dr. Ofer Limon provides vision solutions for 2.5 billion people around the world

Two doctoral students from the Faculty of Engineering were awarded prizes at the annual conference of the Israeli Society for Medical and Biological Engineering 

No doubt, this was a challenging year for you, our students. COVID and all of its enforced limitations challenged us to find creative solutions so that we could continue teaching and sharing our knowledge in the best possible manner. Once the quarantine started, we shifted to remote learning and tutoring. It wasn’t always smooth sailing, but we did our best: a special emergency faculty team was made available to help students with any problem – academic or personal – caused by the situation. Another team was responsible for technical support. Frontal tests were held only when there was no other option, and always according to the Ministry of Health’s regulations. We’re proud of you, our students, for managing these tough times and reaching spectacular achievements. Here are just a few of them:

Despite this year’s challenges, with stopping frontal teaching and the partial shift to working from home, our faculty members had no time to rest. Most of the courses were taught remotely, with lecturers constantly seeking new, creative solutions. Our faculty members continued to research –with a significant amount of effort put into battling COVID-19 – as well as publish and gain recognition in Israel and abroad. Here are the key points of this past year: